Dear Residents,

As many of you know first-hand as active participants, on February 3 I convened a Traffic Solutions Summit to help tackle the ever-increasing traffic congestion in the Pinecrest through Palmetto Bay, and Cutler Bay to Palm Glades transportation corridor. The theme of the day: we are the traffic, so we must be part of the solution.

More than 150 local residents gathered to hear from traffic experts, examine transportation improvement plans underway, and offer input on future plans. Participants broke into small groups to brainstorm traffic solutions including their own personal commitments to reduce the use of single person car rides. As a result, together we produced what would become our realistic action plan to reduce traffic, including commitments from multiple stakeholders. Watch the highlights.

As promised, my office has worked to summarize and compile the Summit results into the attached comprehensive Traffic Solutions Action Plan. The Plan includes short-term and long-term solutions arranged by date along with the primary entity responsible for completing each solution. These solutions are only part of the puzzle as we must also push forward for first-class transit corridors through the SMART plan, and feeder routes to get people to those corridors.

Please know that I continue to be committed to finding ways to prevent urban sprawl and the glut of car-dependent traffic it creates. However, we will only be successful if we keep working together to provide real, effective and desirable, mobility alternatives. I am confident that if we stick to our Traffic Solutions Action Plan, we will experience real and quantifiable results in reducing our traffic congestion.

Thank you to the many residents, officials and organizations that participated in the Traffic Solutions Summit and helped us create our plan of action. I hope that you will stay engaged. In the future, I plan to organize similar summits in additional locations within District 8 and hope that many others will become engaged. Now is the time for us all to embrace the reality that in order to increase mobility, we must get cars off the road.

Yours for a better, safer, more mobile community,